Smiling

A smile is formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, a smile expresses delight, sociability, happiness, joy or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usually involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace. Although cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communication throughout the world, there are large differences among different cultures, religions and societies, with some using smiles to convey confusion or embarrassment.

• What's the use of worrying?
  It never was worth while, so
  Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
  And smile, smile, smile.
  • George Asaf, Smile, Smile, Smile (1915).

• Smiles are the foundation of beauty.
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Chapter 20.

• Smiles form the channels of a future tear.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 97.

• Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away;
  A single laugh demolished the right arm
  Of his own country;—seldom since that day
  Has Spain had heroes.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto XIII, Stanza 11.

• But owned that smile, if oft observed and near,
  Waned in its mirth, and wither'd to a sneer.
  • Lord Byron, Lara, A Tale (1814), Canto I, Stanza 17, line 11.

• From thy own smile I snatched the snake.
  • Lord Byron, Manfred (1817).

• If you smile at me I will understand, cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.
  • Crosby, Stills, & Nash Wooden Ships (1969)

• In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.
  • Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), Stave 2.

• In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world.
  • Amy Goodman “For Whom the Bell's Palsy Tolls” (referring to her fall 2007 bout of Bell's Palsy).

• Comrades, this man has a nice smile, but he's got iron teeth.
  • Attributed to Andrei Gromyko, speech to the Soviet Communist party central committee, Moscow, March 11, 1985, as reported by The Washington Post (March 17, 1985), p. A1, referring to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This statement is not found in translations of official materials.

• The Joker: Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives. But, as my plastic surgeon always said: if you gotta go, go with a smile.
  • Sam Hamm, Warren Skaaren Batman (1989 film).

• And the hall is lone, and the hall is drear,
  For the smiling of woman shineth not here.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (30th August 1823), 'The Bayadere Part I.'

• A sweet smile and a soft word have usually their desired effect.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Francesca Carrara (1834), Vol.II, Chapter 17

• She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, Collected short stories 1, "The promise", p. 407

• A smile that glow'd
  Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 618.

• For smiles from reason flow
  To brute deny'd, and are of love the food.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 239.

• If they (children) smash, the flower vase assumes a smile
  while turning into pieces.
  For a chance to be spilled by their hands,
  anything they hold gets spilled itself full of happiness.
  For a chance to play with them,
  water forgets about its own colourlessness.
  • Suman Pokhrel, Children

• Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
  As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
  • Alexander Pope, Prologue to Satires (1735), line 315.

• With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto V, Stanza 12.

• Nobly he yokes
  A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh
  Was that it was, for not being such a smile:
  The smile mocking the sigh, that it would fly
  From so divine a temple, to commix
  With winds that sailors rail at.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act IV, scene 2, line 51.

• My tables,—meet it is I set it down,
  That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
  At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 5, line 107.

• Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
  As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit
  That could be mov'd to smile at anything.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act I, scene 2, line 205.

• Those happy smilets,
  That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
  What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
  As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act IV, scene 3, line 21.

• When you call me that, smile!
  • Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902), p. 29–30. Presumably the forerunner of "Smile when you say that, partner," familiar to generations of moviegoers.

• A tender smile, our sorrows' only balm.
  • Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire V, line 108.

• A man I knew who lived upon a smile,
  And well it fed him; he look'd plump and fair,
  While rankest venom foam'd through every vein.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 336.

• Some smiles are golden
  While some are magical...
  • Lisa Stanfield, All Around The World (Featuring Barry White), Sheet Music.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 721-22.

• Her very frowns are fairer far
  Than smiles of other maidens are.
  • Hartley Coleridge, She is not Fair.

• The smile of her I love is like the dawn
  Whose touch makes Memnon sing:
  O see where wide the golden sunlight flows—
  The barren desert blossoms as the rose!
  • R. W. Gilder, The Smile of Her I Love.

• With the smile that was childlike and bland.
  • Bret Harte, Language of Truthful James (Heathen Chinee).

• Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye.
  • Samuel Lover, Rory O'More.

• Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss?
  Three angels gave me at once a kiss.
  • George MacDonald, Baby, Stanza 7.

• The thing that goes farthest towards making life worth while,
  That costs the least, and does the most, is just a pleasant smile.
  * * * * * *
  It's full of worth and goodness too, with manly kindness blent,
  It's worth a million dollars and it doesn't cost a cent.
  • W. D. Nesbit, Let us Smile.

• There is a snake in thy smile, my dear,
  And bitter poison within thy tear.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Beatrice Cenci.

• The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps—does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, 61.

• 'Tis easy enough to be pleasant,
  When life flows along like a song;
  But the man worth while is the one who will smile
  When everything goes dead wrong;
  For the test of the heart is trouble,
  And it always comes with the years,
  But the smile that is worth the praise of earth
  Is the smile that comes through tears.
  * * * * *
  But the virtue that conquers passion,
  And the sorrow that hides in a smile—
  It is these that are worth the homage of earth,
  For we find them but once in a while.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Worth While.

• I feel in every smile a chain.
  • John Wolcot (Peter Pindar), Pindariana.

• And she hath smiles to earth unknown—
  Smiles that with motion of their own
  Do spread, and sink, and rise.
  • William Wordsworth, I met Louisa in the Shade, Stanza 2. (Afterwards cancelled by him, not found in complete ed. of poems).

• Smile Quotes